Endurance

I have a bad habit of thinking that I can save the world.  It's not so much that I think I have what it takes as it is that I have these desires to do more with my life than make coffee, to go out and actually help people, to see the suffering in the world come to an end.

This idea first manifested in college when I thought I could save a person close to me. That my love was big enough to change a heart turned out to be a silly dream. As I wondered at the mess I'd made, I asked God why this had to be.  After three nights of crying myself to sleep, He told me, there in the deepest part of my heart that hurt so much: "You didn't trust me."


He didn't just leave me with that somewhat cryptic message.  He guided me along the way of healing through discovering a devotion to the Divine Mercy of Jesus.  It was a journey I'd already been on unknowingly, but the pieces began to fit together and I began to see more clearly every day that I can't save anyone--not even myself--because God has already saved the world.  By His Passion on the Cross, His death and His resurrection, Christ has already set us free.

I began to reflect on the Passion, and to unite my sufferings to Christ's on the cross.  Finally, after many months of prayer and novenas (the 54 day rosary novena is a personal favorite) I reached a point in my personal life of being able to say to my friend:

I have trusted in the Eternal God for your welfare, and joy has come to me from the Holy One because of the mercy that will swiftly reach you from your eternal savior. With mourning and lament I sent you forth, but God will give you back to me with enduring gladness and joy. (Baruch 4:22-23)

My heart was finally at a point of peace knowing that when I see my friend in heaven (and I will see him in heaven), our earthly drama and suffering will be perfected in "enduring gladness and joy."

Still, I had a nagging thought that I was supposed to do more. I graduated college during a recession with a degree in English and no career goals, so while I went back to work at my high school job at the family business, I began reading about the problems of the world.

I was inspired to go to third world countries and kick down doors of brothels and save the innocent women forced to work in them.  I wanted to track down not the pimps but the men who paid for such services and so created a market for the business of selling people and objectified women everywhere. I wanted to teach children whose only chance at freedom from poverty was education.  I wanted to provide a safe haven for women who are victims of abuse, or who want to choose life but can't do it on their own.  I wanted to be Dorothy Day and Mother Teresa.

But I am most definitely not either of these women.  And from the looks of things, going off to foreign countries to fight perverts and love the poor and abused is not what God has planned for me.

Like Saint Therese, I wanted to choose all vocations, so I chose love, which encompasses all other vocations.  I began to realize that, like Therese, as much as I desired to be a missionary, I was destined to stay close to home.  I found myself making coffee (lots of coffee) and I realized that God was teaching me (slowly and patiently because the selfish brat in me won't go down without a fight) how to love.

I'm finding that all God wants of us is for us to be who He created us to be.  If we let Him love us as we are, if we stop trying so hard to be what we're not, or at least what we're not yet, He will be able to accomplish His mission through us.

As for suffering, it has been my experience that it brings us closer to the heart of Jesus.  I believe that in our sinful world, we cannot be free of it, but we can embrace it as an opportunity to take part in the redemptive work of God.  In the suffering of our neighbor, we can learn to be compassionate and understanding.  SO much easier said than done, but St. Edith Stein says it so well:

The world is in flames. The conflagration can also reach our house. But high above all flames towers the cross. They cannot consume it. It is the path from earth to heaven. It will lift one who embraces it in faith, love, and hope into the bosom of the Trinity.

The world is in flames. Are you impelled to put them out? Look at the cross. From the open heart gushes the blood of the Saviour. This extinguishes the flames of hell. Make your heart free by the faithful fulfilment of your vows; then the flood of divine love will be poured into your heart until it overflows and becomes fruitful to all the ends of the earth. Do you hear the groans of the wounded on the battlefields in the west and the east? You are not a physician and not a nurse and cannot bind up the wounds. You are enclosed in a cell and cannot get to them. Do you hear the anguish of the dying? You would like to be a priest and comfort them. Does the lament of the widows and orphans distress you? You would like to be an angel of mercy and help them. Look at the Crucified. If you are nuptially bound to him by the faithful observance of your holy vows, your being is precious blood. Bound to him, you are omnipresent as he is. You cannot help here or there like the physician, the nurse, the priest. You can be at all fronts, wherever there is grief, in the power of the cross. Your compassionate love takes you everywhere, this love from the divine heart. Its precious blood is poured everywhere soothing, healing, saving.

The eyes of the Crucified look down on you asking, probing. Will you make your covenant with the Crucified anew in all seriousness? What will you answer him? “Lord, where shall we go? You have the words of eternal life.”

The path from earth to heaven. . . the path from suffering to glory. . .the path from self to love. . .the way is by the cross, but we must have faith, we must believe, we must hope.

I aspire.